Cold
by Siaynoqsbride
Summary: Vader, OC. A young Sith muses on her fate and is met by someone she was not expecting... Response to a challenge, vignette, angst


_A/N- This was written for a challenge at boards . theforce . net. The challenge was actually pretty difficult for me, considering that I had never written an OC before, and the challenge was for an OC-centric fic about a female Jedi that turned to the Dark Side. I ended up making it somewhat about Anakin anyways, so I cheated a little, but I hope you enjoy this anyways. Thank you for at least clicking on the title;I know OCs are not really very popular, but mine is really quite far from a Mary-Sue. Anyways, enough with all this rambling, enjoy the story! _

Rain slowly drips down onto my upturned face, tricking and falling away into the folds of brown fabric that makes up my cloak. Some say that my home planet is beautiful, with its sweeping fields of golden grain and emerald forests. In the winter, everything will turn a perfect color of creamy white, and the whole world will be blanketed by thick folds of snow.

It is night as I look across the remnants of my old village. The nights here are not as beautiful as some might say. Everything turns cold and wet and dark, and the only light is from the stars that slowly twinkle above, and the one solitary moon that stands out, a lonely sight.

The fact that I was born here only serves to disgust me. I have put everything behind me; it has been swept away as if in a flood of mighty water, the kind that rushes in streamlets and rivers further on. Odd that I should remember so much about a place where I only lived for two years of my life.

A hideous sneer comes over my face. It was more like I had been stolen, ripped apart from my family. Not that they wanted me back, not after they saw what I had become.

_She was cooking in the kitchen that I remembered as having mud-pasted walls. It was strange to me that now it should be painted a bright color of blue; ahh well, things change. My eyes lit upon my mother. She met my gaze and dropped the bowl she was mixing, allowing grey and white shards of glass to fly everywhere. _

"_Are you not glad to see me?" I asked it of her in a calm, serene tone, trying to ignore the anger that is steadily building inside of me. "Or perhaps you don't remember me." _

"_Ahlene," she whispered softly, her eyes darting from side to side. "S'toulok! Jmarais, quoraist…" My eyes burned with hate, a hate that has entered my veins with slow, steady poison, filling me until there is nothing else. _

"_Your daughter," I persisted relentlessly. "Me. You abandoned me; did you think that I would not be able to find you?" Her eyes met mine, and I knew that she knew me, that she could not feign ignorance any longer. My lightsaber sprung into my hand, and as I ignited the green-silver plasma flame, I kne w that it will be a relief to finally have it done, to have the ghosts of my past gone. _

The logs scattered about me are far too wet to start a fire. So instead of fighting the elements, I accept them and allow them to become part of me. I muse as the darkness surrounds me, cloaking me in its shadow.

Do I regret my decision? I force the thought out of my mind; it is dangerous to think such things, dangerous to even dream them… but still my thoughts persist.

I close my eyes again, and suddenly the rain does not feel like a dark joy against my skin. Suddenly, it feels cold and unwelcome, and the drops splatter against my cheeks as I huddle, feeling slightly lost. I have not eaten for three days, so some of this may be exhaustion.

I have managed to numb myself off from all emotions and feelings that I may have felt in my other life, so it is with an impassive eye that I look inwards across my past.

First, there was only the light of the Jedi Council. Memories stream past me; creating my first lightsaber, slowly learning the ways of the Force… but that is not what happened, I remind myself. The Jedi _lied_. They do not know the true nature of the Force; only my Master has taught me that.

My master, the man in the hooded cloak, who spoke of deception and deceit, of corruption in the Jedi Council. I did not want to listen at first, and so would not listen to the point where the words did not concern me, simply flowing over me. But as I returned from the mission in which I first saw him, I began to see, began to find that things were not as simple as they had been portrayed to be.

There was corruption, festering deep below the surface of the Jedi and the Senate, bureaucracy that threatened to destroy us all. And as much as I did not want to listen, I found myself noticing small changes, things which I had not noticed before which now began to trouble me.

The Jedi were blind, wandering, stumbling in the dark, lost to everything. They did not see the error of their ways, and no amount of talking to the council helped, no amount of telling them that it was not too late to turn back, that they could still _change_.

It took me awhile before I realized that it _was_ too late.

But by then, I had already began to accept the teachings of the cloaked, hidden man, had learned to call _him_ Master. And the new power grew within me, slowly, until it was something nearly tangible to me. I could slowly feel my life slipping away, but somehow, that no longer mattered.

And the Lost Twenty became the Lost Twenty-One.

I shiver now, my fast-burning power no comfort to me under the slow, tedious assault of my memories. There is no regret, for there cannot be. Instead, there is only darkness.

But my Master had soon outlived his use for me. He banished me from his sight, and as I tried to resist, I tasted agony. Electric blue plasma, coursing through my body, burning, blinding, painful, white. Eventually it subsided, and I limped all the way here, the only thing I had my rage and the burning power that had somehow never left me.

At first, I did not know why I had come here, had come to this planet that had no use for me. My parents had been only too willing to give me up at the tender age of two, after all. But then I knew; then I discovered, even though it had taken me more then two years of wandering in the forests here.

I had not yet found the secret to the ultimate power that my master had promised me, that he had seduced me with gentle promises into seeking. I must have been unworthy, I thought time after time. There must have been too much within me that still clung to the Jedi, to the Light. I realized that my past still haunted me; there was still attachment. And so I had to be rid of it.

I stand over this hilltop now, looking down at the remnants of my mother's village. It is all gone now; there is nothing left to mark the signs that an entire people lived here in peace. I prepare to leave this all behind, as I have found the secret which will let my master know that I have truly dedicated myself to the Dark Side.

There is a sound. At first, it is no more then a slight noise carried on the wind. I, however, am immediately alert to the sign of any movement, anything that might possibly put me in danger or give me a chance to further prove my worth. There is curiosity within me, wondering what new foe there is for me to best.

For I have no friends.

Curiosity turns to horror within me as the sound solidifies and the figure reveals itself, coming over the hilltop slowly. It is the form of a dark demon of the type from nightmares. At first I think I am dreaming; I only know I am not when a lightsaber the color of blood streams out from its hand and I can feel the heat from it even where I am standing.

I reach out tentatively with the Force, wanting to gauge my enemy. What I find there knocks me down on my knees, as my breath hitches in shock and I drop the lightsaber that had sprung into my hand. There were shields, but behind that, I sensed almost a familiar presence, like haunted echoes in a vast canyon.

And beyond even that, power. It is power beyond my wildest dreams, and I know that if this monster were to harness it, it would be far beyond my power to control. The knowledge of my doom creeps over me, and, oddly enough, I still feel nothing. The rain makes a distinct noise as it hits his black armor, a small plink, I notice with vague detachment. I am far too weak to fight him, and so it is with stoic calm that I will meet my death.

There is not even a plea on my lips as he slices my skull open. I fall to the ground, mud smearing into my cape, mixing with blood. It is only then that I am able to feel, and the emotion surprises me. It is regret, almost overpowering in its intensity, and in the clarity of my life spilling away, I realize something so bizarre it makes me want to laugh.

"Anakin," I whisper once as I close my eyes. The Chosen One of the Jedi, the one who had been the best among them. He had fallen, just as I had. The last thing I see his black mask, the last thing I feel his shields being lowered enough to expose a whirl of emotions set in by the name, fear and anger and hope and pain. And then there is nothing.


End file.
